


Consequences

by Meynara



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Gen, Power Swap AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 13:30:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18121592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meynara/pseuds/Meynara
Summary: When Minato's team is in danger, he will do whatever it takes to save his precious students. Even if it borders on the edge of harming himself and exposing a secret about his village that isn't his to tell, he has to save his students.Whatever it takes.Or:What changes come when two characters abilities are swapped, and how does it spitball into canon?





	Consequences

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Mix-Up no Jutsu Zine](https://mixupnojutsuzine.tumblr.com/)!

It wasn’t the first time that Minato wished he had access to some of the abilities of his peers, as he raced from branch to branch, following what trail Kakashi had left for him to follow as soon as he had completed his own mission.

The boy might be overprotective of his remaining teammate, but he wasn’t quite so hasty as others might have perceived, after all. He would know, being the boy’s sensei for years by this point.

No, but Minato did wish he could access abilities beyond his current repertoire. He wasn’t a sensor like Kushina, wasn’t anything approaching a sage like Jiraiya-sensei, didn’t have access to  _ katon  _ like his former student Obito or over half of the village did.

All he had was his wits, his speed, and whatever Kurama felt fit to lend to him, which was rarely much if he himself wasn’t in danger. Often enough, it wasn’t himself he feared for, so he couldn’t count on the beast to assist him. Of course, he had his own jutsu he could access on top of that, but right in that moment there wasn’t anything overly helpful he could think of that he already knew, not if Rin was in as much danger as he feared.

Closing in on what he hoped was their location, he could hear screams of pain, could almost  _ feel  _ the terror that awaited up ahead. His foot pressed off one last branch before he was breaking into a clearing of sorts, the sound of water rushing hitting his ears as he landed on the ground below him, continuing to run, able to see more of what was going on now that there weren’t trees surrounding him.

It was devastating -- even to Minato who had been on the battlefield numerous times, the scent of death surrounding him was overwhelming. The fact that so many had fallen -- and he could see them, there was no arguing that a battle had been fought there -- was a testament to the fact this had been foolishly dangerous for Kakashi to go on his own. It took longer than he would like to find where Kakashi was laying on the ground -- with another body laying close to his, having Minato’s chest clench in worry -- and by the time he did, he could see someone walking closer to the pair.

Quickly, his hands moved in front of him, his feet not slowing down in the slightest as he moved through the hand-signs.  _ ‘Dog. Horse. Monkey. Ram.’ _ As his fingers moved into the last of the signs, there was a rumble from the water -- the water that was closer and closer to himself and thus easier to pull on than trying to use a jutsu that relied on what water he had within himself to spare. Within a matter of seconds, there was a blur of water that slammed into the figure that had been moving towards his two precious students, hitting with a much harder force than one might think possible from what appeared to be a toad made out of water, but it knocked the figure back, off the path and giving Minato the time he needed to come closer to Kakashi and Rin.

Kakashi looked  **exhausted** , but otherwise nothing that wouldn’t heal on its own. Given the fact his headband was up, he’d likely exhausted his chakra using the Sharingan he’d gotten from Obito. However, in front of him lay Rin -- Rin with a bloody hole in her chest, the coppery tang of blood flooding his nostrils along with the smell of burnt flesh. Given what he had seen in those few moments, he could deduce at least partially what had happened.

One of his students had tried to kill the other.

It was mind boggling, but given the way the pair had fallen, it seemed to be the last thing Kakashi had done prior to collapsing. That had implications that Minato didn’t want to think of in the moment, because he had more important things to do.

Within him, he could feel Kurama stirring even as he moved his hands, checking to see if Rin was even still alive, if there was anything to save. The toad of water that stood nearby seemed to be standing sentry over the three, keeping others from coming near -- though it sounded as if there was only one trying to move towards them at this point. He held his breath as he pressed his fingers against Rin’s neck, trying to ignore the fox, ignore the enemy as he was trained never to do, because he needed to focus on this -- needed to do what he could if it was even  _ possible  _ to save her at this point.

It took a moment before he could feel her pulse, unsteady and thready, but still there for the moment.  _ Good _ . He might not be a medic, but he could work with that. Feeling Kurama growing more insistent within him, he sent a distracted thought towards the demon fox as he called upon more water, pulling from the toad rather than the water racing below off the cliff nearby.  _ ‘What?’ _

_ ‘Your brat, she’s  _ **_changed_ ** _.’ _

Minato wasn’t even going to protest the fact that Rin was his -- because she was. She might not be his child, but she was his student, his responsibility. His  _ family _ . So instead of protesting that, he grunted, cleaning out her wound, seeing how it angrily went straight through her, but even as he despaired helping her, she kept hanging on.  _ ‘She’s Rin. What do you  _ **_mean_ ** _ , fox?’ _

There was a chuckle, something almost positive coming from the being that had shown nothing but anger and hatred before -- not that Kurama was being anything approaching  _ friendly  _ in that moment, but he was certainly being  **smug** .  _ ‘She’s a vessel, now. Like you. Another,  _ **_lesser_ ** _ beast is trapped within her.’ _

Pausing for the briefest of moments, the teacher looked down at his student, as if he would be able to tell there was a difference of that nature without Kurama assisting him. “No...she’s not, she can’t be, you’re lying to me, trying to let me let her die.” He grit his teeth, carefully moving Rin’s body as she struggled to breathe with a hole in her chest, struggled to so much as  _ live  _ even if she appeared to be unconscious.

Behind him, he could hear Kakashi stirring, the movement against the ground beneath him seeming inordinately loud. Rather than call to him, however, Minato kept working -- which only drew more chuckling from within him.  _ ‘She  _ **_is_ ** _ \-- it’s the only thing that has kept her alive this long, but Isobu is nowhere  _ **_near_ ** _ as strong as I am. You  _ **need** _ me to help you if you want her to live, brat.’ _

Closing his eyes, Minato kept his hands working at Rin’s wound, trying to get it clean even as he extended his senses, pulling on Kurama and his abilities to see what the beast was seeing. Only then was he able to see Rin’s chakra, see the way it flowed through her body, see how there was much more focused around her wound…

...and indeed, there was a foreign chakra within her, sealed poorly within the kunoichi’s body, along with something else, something glaringly horrible, something that Kakashi’s attack had managed to dislodge, leaving it detached within Rin’s body.

Once he could see that, he took a deep breath before opening himself, just a little, to Kurama’s presence.  _ ‘....please. Help me. Help me save her. We can’t --  _ **_I can’t_ ** _ lose her.’ _

The chuckling Minato heard from the fox was nothing short of dark and foreboding, but in that moment, he didn’t care. As Kakashi finally sat himself up behind him, the water beast he had conjured finally dissipating, Minato began to glow a dark, corrupted red. There was no real trust established between the tailed beast and his vessel, but there was no way Minato would let that stop them.

Rin was too important. He’d already lost Obito to this war, he couldn’t lose another student. The fact she also now held one of the tailed beasts was only a boon for the village, as opposed to something Minato cared about personally in that moment.

Chakra began to flow from Minato and Kurama into Rin’s struggling body, focusing around the wound, and that seemed to help some almost instantly. The seal placed on her body seemed to only allow a very small amount of her beast’s chakra to be released, but having Minato’s Kurama tinged chakra added to her own and to what her beast was providing caused a startling change.

The wound in her chest began to heal itself. It wasn’t pretty, and it was good that Minato had been cleaning it out to keep as many foreign objects out of it, but even with the boost there was only so much that could be done. So when Minato’s hand began moving without his input, he (reluctantly) did not fight it, knowing what Kurama was about to do.

When his hand gently hit Rin’s chest, her eyes opened and she screamed, a positively inhuman sound as the opening on the front of her chest was sealed shut with fire. The sound was achingly familiar to him, something he had heard multiple times in his life -- but something he’d never wanted to hear from his own students. Not while they were still so young.

“Sensei, what--” Kakashi’s voice was confused as he scrambled up, looking from Minato to Rin and back, only afterwards realizing that someone else was running close, someone cloaked from the neck down, with white protrusions coming from his neck. Kakashi’s attention was thus turned towards the presumed enemy, standing between him and what remained of his team.

The voice that came from Minato’s throat was darker than usual, almost demonic with a hint of a rasp, but still undeniably Minato as he pulled his hand back, using the other to move Rin’s body once more, needing access to her back. “It’s this or she  **dies** , Kakashi.  _ I refuse to lose another student to this war. _ ” His voice turned to a growl as Rin began to scream once more, the wound on her back likewise being closed, causing immense pain, but he could accept that.

Pain was better than death.

Before Minato could try to shove Kurama back into the prison within his mind, there was one last shove of chakra, pushing straight through Rin’s body -- through where the dark, abhorrent looking seal had been placed, shattering it completely.

_ ‘Better get another seal on her, brat. Else this will have all been for nothing.’ _ Kurama’s dark chuckling was the last thing he heard as the fox pulled his chakra back willingly -- something that startled Minato, even as his body returned to its normal appearance.

“--mean, Rin’s alive? I saw you kill her, Bakashi?!” Minato tuned in to what was going on around him, hearing the sound of flesh hitting flesh, hands moving to position Rin so he could place another seal -- a better seal. One that would help Rin, allow her to access the beast within her much like Minato did with Kurama. He saw the foreign (but vaguely familiar) man punching Kakashi, fist against jaw, and their heights...weren’t too far off of one another?

And the voice...was  _ familiar _ .

Minato didn’t have  **time** to wonder about this, however, using chakra to open one of the pockets on his vest, pulling out a pot of ink and a brush. Rin’s shirt was pressed up, only just covering her chest, giving her a modicum of modesty even in this life or death situation she was still in, her breathing rough and body trembling. He dipped the brush into the ink, carefully drawing designs over her abdomen, vividly recalling learning how to place seals as a youth, much younger than his students, still feeling how naturally it came to him, his mind quickly making adjustments on the fly to compensate for Isobu’s presence instead of Kurama’s, compensating for Rin’s smaller natural chakra pool, for her smaller body, for how old she was currently. Placing seals on people was much more difficult than using paper or the earth beneath them.

If he killed grass, it wasn’t a big deal. If he killed his student by miscalculating, that was unforgivable.

The scuffle happening behind him quieted suddenly just before he placed the finishing touches on the seal, the ink still wet on her abdomen as he turned his gaze to look behind him, to see what -- to see  _ who  _ \-- Kakashi was dealing with.

With scars along the right side of his face, his left eye closed or missing, and a mop of dark hair atop his head, the face of their ‘enemy’ was achingly familiar, one that had haunted Minato’s dreams along with many others the past months. “...Obito?”

“I, uh, yeah. Sensei -- is Rin really going to live?” Obito sounded much younger than Minato could ever recall hearing, even when they had been fresh faced genin. Kakashi looked not much better, standing beside him, the pair leaning into each other and looking exhausted, with Kakashi’s headband pulled down over his left eye.

They were shinobi, they were both trained to kill, trained to face horrors untold, but right in that moment they both appeared to be the children they truly should be, and it broke Minato’s heart.

“I hope so, Obito. I hope so. We need to get back to the village before anyone else comes this way, however.” Carefully, he scooped Rin up into his arms, into what looked much like a bridal carry, her head leaning against his vest while he kept her close to him, looking down at his other two students.

Kakashi watched the pair carefully before nodding, standing and pulling himself off of Obito. “I’ve -- I haven’t got any chakra--”

“You still have your feet, use them.” Minato’s face set, looking almost harsh. “I know you’re exhausted, but we can’t linger. Obito? You’re going to have some things to explain once we get there.” The teacher wanted to ask, wanted to know how it was Obito had lived, wanted to know how his student had returned from the dead -- but the time was not then. Not while they needed to move.

“You, too, sensei.” Kakashi’s face was serious -- something Minato could tell despite the mask thanks to years of knowing the boy. “What you did -- I know you don’t have access to  _ katon _ . And your body…” He trailed off, watching Minato carefully.

There was a beat before, “I know. Once we get to the village, I’ll explain. But you two cannot tell anyone about this. About how I saved Rin. It’s a village secret, S-class. We’ll decide what we tell the village as a whole later, but just know you cannot, absolutely can **_not_ ** talk about it now. Understood?”

There was a long pause before Kakashi nodded. “...understood, sensei. We won’t talk about it.”

“...right. I won’t talk, either.” Obito looked reluctant about that, the protrusions around his neck moving, wriggling momentarily before stopping. “So let’s go.”

Minato took a deep breath before leading the way, keeping Rin cradled against his chest. He’d managed to save one student, another had returned from the dead, but all he could feel was dread in the pit of his stomach.

These things did not happen without reason. Kurama would ask for something later, and quite possibly would simply take it, and Minato might not be able to fight against it. Obito’s situation was strange and felt wrong on many levels. There would be consequences from that as well, he was certain.

But for the moment, he was simply glad that his team was together once more, and would hopefully be whole in the near future.


End file.
